Hey, Prime members, you can binge eight new episodes of the Mr. Ballin podcast one month early and all episodes ad-free on Amazon Music.
Download the Amazon Music app today. Today's story comes out of China, and it is a brutal story.
There's just no way to tell it without being graphic.
So with that in mind, this is definitely a mature audiences-only type of story.
That said, it is a fascinating story, and the ending is something that very few of you are going to see coming.
It's going to feel kind of predictable throughout most of the story, and then it's like the end completely changes your entire impression of the story.
It's wild. But before we get into that story, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark, and Mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right podcast because that's all we do and we upload twice a week, once on Monday and once on Thursday.
So if that's of interest to you, please offer to power wash the Amazon Music Follow Buttons house, but be sure to set the machine all the way up so you blow off all their shingles and blast the paint off their house and then just leave.
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Service is not available in all states. One Saturday afternoon in November of 1990, a 26-year-old kindergarten teacher named Su Lixia sat crying on a bench at a train station in the city of Naha, which is located in northeastern China.
Sue had just left her husband for good. They'd had a bad marriage for a long time.
It was very contentious. They fought all the time.
And that morning, they had gotten into this major fight.
And for Sue, it was kind of like the final straw.
And so she just stormed into the bedroom, grabbed some things, threw it in a bag, and just stormed out.
She was done. But Sue really didn't have a plan for what she was going to do once she left the house.
And so she found herself just sitting at this train station doing nothing, just staring at the trains rolling in and out over and over again.
And as she sat there, again, not knowing what she's going to do, she suddenly took stock of the fact that very few people were getting on and off of these trains.
And in fact, the train station itself was weirdly vacant.
So the city of Naha, where Su was, was actually fairly small by China's standards, even though there was 70,000 people that lived there.
The city sat at the base of this towering mountain, and then all around the city in the outskirts was basically just farmland with lots of soy and corn crops.
And then as you move closer to the city center, there were lots of things you would expect to see in a city like tall buildings and residential and commercial areas.
But overall, Naha was just kind of boring.
You know, it's like the city was a city, even if it was small, but there was just not much going on.
And in fact, if you lived in China, but not in Naha, there was a very good chance you didn't know Naha even existed.
Like it was kind of irrelevant. However, in the last few months leading up to this moment that Sue is sitting at this train station, the city of Naha had suddenly been put on the map and everybody knew about this city.
Because women from Naha were going missing in droves.
In fact, Sue herself knew of at least a dozen women who had gone missing over the past few months from Naha.
And as these women started going missing, it was making the news all over the country, and women who lived in Naha were acutely aware of the risks of being out alone, you know, in fear that somebody was going to come snatch them up and take them away.
In fact, every time Sue would go to work, she would make sure she would walk with other women, like in pairs, to ensure safety.
I mean, this was a really scary time if you were a woman living in Naha.
However, the caveat to the missing women was all of them to this point, when Sue was sitting at the train station, had been sex workers.
And Sue, she thought, you know, in virtue of not being a sex worker and instead being a kindergarten teacher, that somehow she was not actually that vulnerable to being snatched up or, you know, whatever was happening to these women.
She just felt like it wouldn't happen to her.
But now, as Sue sat at this train station, which again was eerily quiet and vacant, she couldn't help but feel like she had made a bad decision being here.
She felt like she could easily become the next woman who went missing from Naha.
And so Sue began to think, you know, maybe I should just go back home and try to patch things up with my husband, mostly for her safety, just to go back inside her home and be safe again.
But before she could stand up to do that, she noticed on the other end of the platform, this man who was exceptionally well-dressed with this beautiful brown wool coat and fancy pants.
He looked like he stepped straight out of a fashion magazine.
He came up onto the train platform and without saying a word, he walked slowly down the platform all the way to where Sue was and he reached into his pocket and he held out a tissue to her because he saw she was crying.
And Sue, she's looking up at the sky, and again, there's nobody else here, and she's very much on edge, and she doesn't know what to do.
I mean, it was already creepy that this place was vacant, but it's even stranger to have a random man come up to her and try to initiate some sort of interaction with her.
It just felt wrong and weird and very suspicious.
But as Sue stared at this guy trying to figure out what his angle was, she could see that he had kind of kept himself standing back from her, kind of a respectful distance, you know, not trying to crowd her out.
And he was looking at her with a very sympathetic look on his face.
And he's holding this tissue out. And he said to her, are you okay?
And he hands the tissue again, like, please take it.
And there was just something about this guy that felt very sincere.
And Sue kind of let her guard down. And she accepted the tissue and wiped the tears from her eyes.
She didn't say anything. And then this guy, he said, hey, do you mind if I sit with you?
And at this point, Sue said, yeah, okay, you can sit down.
And so this very handsome, well-dressed man took a seat next to Sue, not right next to her, again, respectful distance from her.
And again, he asked her, you know, hey, are you doing okay?
And for Sue, whose life had been basically miserable the last few months or even years with this terrible marriage she was in, You know, she wasn't used to being asked if she was okay.
And this man, who she didn't know, had caught her at this very vulnerable moment in her life.
And it was like all her emotions just came pouring out.
And she began sobbing hysterically, telling this guy that no, she was not okay.
Her life was in ruins. She had just abandoned her family and she had no idea what she was going to do.
And finally, when Sue stopped telling this guy all about her problems, she felt very embarrassed and kind of looked up at him like she was sorry for even saying as much.
But the man who was very intently listening, he was just nodding along, very sympathetic.
And he told Sue that his name was Jia, Jia Wang, and that he was a director at a factory not far from here.
And if she was open to it, he'd be happy to think about hiring her at the factory, you know, give her a new start potentially, because it seemed like that's what she really needed.
And then he asked her if she wanted to come back to his house to discuss this job opportunity further.
Now with this, even though Sue had really appreciated everything this guy had done to this point, the second he asked her to come back to his house, she's like, red flags are going up.
She knew there's something off here. Clearly this guy does have an angle and it's not to benefit me.
And so she looked at him with an absolutely suspicious look like, no way am I going to your house.
I don't know you. Like I appreciate the tissue and you letting me cry, but there's no way.
But again, as she's staring at him with the suspicious look, the look on Gia's face remained very sympathetic and very gentle.
And it almost seemed like he was just going to get up and go like, hey, I'm sorry for offending you.
But before he did get up to leave, Sue said, hold on.
Actually, yes, I'll come with you. She didn't know why she agreed to go with him.
Maybe it was because her life was so messed up at this point that she was just kind of ready to take chances and be sort of reckless.
And this was definitely that big chance, very reckless.
But again, she just felt like, you know, there's something sincere about this guy and she felt like she could trust him.
And so Sue and Gia stood up and together they walked down the train platform, not saying much.
They went downstairs, they went out to the street and they walked a couple of blocks to where Gia's street was.
And as soon as they turned the corner and he showed Sue which house was his, Sue looked up and whatever hesitation she had had still to that point about following the stranger to his house were gone because she saw his house was beautiful.
It wasn't that it was so grand or anything.
It totally fit with the neighborhood, but it was very well maintained and totally felt on brand for a guy who was so well dressed and so well manicured and frankly, so handsome.
So Gia led the way to the front door of his house.
He unlocked the door, he opened it up, and then he gently gestured for Sue to come on inside.
And so she did. She walked past him. Gia followed her in.
And the two of them took off their shoes and made their way into the kitchen where Gia brewed some tea for them.
And then they both sat down and began to sip their tea and talk about this job opportunity.
And so for a few minutes, you know, Gia is telling Sue all about the role and what she might be doing.
And Sue is kind of asking general questions about it.
But, you know, for the most part, she just kind of enjoyed being in the presence of somebody who seemed to care about her.
But after she finished her entire glass of tea, suddenly Jia, who had been talking this whole time about the factory, just stopped.
It was like he was waiting for her to drink that entire drink.
And as soon as she was done with her cup, Jia, again, he went quiet and just stared at Su with this kind of sinister look on his face, like he was very pleased with what was going on.
And at that point, Sue looked down at her teacup and then back at Gia.
Then suddenly she began to feel very drowsy.
It was like her vision was beginning to go.
And she realized Gia clearly had poisoned her.
There was something inside of her tea. And so before she could do anything, everything went black.
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Rules and restrictions apply. Hey, it's Mr. Ballin.
I'm excited to tell you about something special.
For the first time, my show, Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries, has joined forces with Redacted, Declassified Mysteries with Luke LaManna, to tell a story so complex it required our combined storytelling styles.
This special episode is called A Redacted Medical Mystery.
In it, unexplained symptoms after a routine surgery quickly unravel into something much darker, leading straight to classified government operations hidden for decades.
To listen and uncover the truth alongside us, head to either the Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries or Redacted show pages right now.
Or search for A Redacted Medical Mystery in the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.
If you're fascinated by unexplained medical stories, well, stick around on Medical Mysteries.
Every week, we dive deep into cases that will leave you questioning everything you know about the human body.
And if government conspiracies are more your style, Redacted is your go-to for stories that unravel secrets never meant to see the light of day.
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A couple of weeks later, just a few blocks away from where Su met Jia at the train station, a police officer named Zhang was standing behind his desk at the police station when a very concerned-looking elderly couple came inside.
Now, this couple was here to speak with Zhang about a missing person, but the missing person was not Su.
She had been missing for two weeks now, nobody had seen her, but no one had reported her missing.
Her husband had just assumed that Sue had left him, and that's why he hadn't seen her, and so he had naturally not reported that.
And again, nobody else knew she was missing, so keep that in mind.
Officer Zhang has no idea about Sue and Jia, none of it.
But when this elderly couple came in to make a missing person report, Officer Zhang was not the least bit surprised.
It was now December of 1990, and over the past six months, 20 women out of Naha had suddenly gone missing.
Remember, Sue is not one of those 20. The 20 are mostly sex workers who went missing at that same train station where Sue met Jia.
And so Officer Zhang was used to making all these missing person reports.
But candidly, the police actually felt like, you know, because these were sex workers that were going missing, they weren't sure if they were actually being abducted or if they were simply getting on a train and kind of leaving town to go work somewhere else.
And so really there wasn't a whole lot of investigation happening to figure out why so many of these women were going missing.
But again, Officer Zhang, he's not surprised that they're telling him they want to file a missing person report.
But when Zhang took this elderly couple to an interview room to talk to them about whoever was missing in their lives, when this couple spoke, Officer Zhang knew this was different.
Because the couple was not reporting another missing woman from Naha who also happened to be a sex worker.
Instead, they were reporting that a man was missing, a businessman.
However, the details of his disappearance sounded eerily similar to all these sex-working women who had also gone missing.
This guy was last seen at that same train station where Su had met Jia, and then nobody had seen him, and so that's why they were here.
And so Officer Zhang, he wrote up their report, and then he told the couple that, you know, very likely this man is okay, and he'll show up at some point under his own steam, but he told them the police would look into it, and they'd be in touch.
However, as this couple got up and turned around and left, Officer Zhang couldn't help but feel like this missing man and all these missing women went missing from the same place.
And it's the same city and it's the same pattern over and over again, but now we have a man.
And even though Zhang wanted to write it off as an anomaly, he started to wonder if this missing man was connected to all these missing women.
Because by January of 1991, so two months after Su had gone missing without a trace and still had not been reported by anybody, and six weeks after that elderly couple reported that man missing, another five people from Naha had gone missing, two more women, and three more men.
And so now the police in Naha were looking at 26 people, men and women, that had all gone missing very recently out of Naha, and nobody had a clue what happened to them.
And importantly, because now there were men who were not sex workers who were going missing, the police couldn't just write this whole thing off as, oh, these sex working women are just going to another city to go do their work there.
Like that was not a possibility anymore.
Clearly something bad was happening and the police knew they really needed to do a real investigation here.
So finally, in early spring of that year, the police in Naha formed a task unit and legitimately began investigating all these disappearances.
But amazingly, there was like no information.
Like there was nothing. These people went missing and nobody heard from them.
There was no evidence of where they went.
There was not even any sign that anything bad happened to them because no bodies had been found.
There was no evidence of really anything happening.
All the police knew is these 26 people, not including Su, so she would be the 27th person, had been at this train station and then vanished.
And that's all they knew. And it got to the point where this story really began to spread around China.
And it became like this running joke that if you don't want to live, go to Naha. because everybody assumed there had to be some sort of serial killer or something happening there who was just roaming the streets, picking people off.
And then by late summer of 1991, when really this story had taken hold across the country and was becoming a bigger and bigger deal, because there was absolutely no resolution here, police had no idea what was going on, well, the whole situation got a whole lot worse, because now, in addition to people suddenly vanishing at the train station in Naha, more people were also going missing in other cities nearby Naha, but all along the same train line that left out of Naha.
So more train stations, more disappearances all around the area, not just the city of Naha, but all around.
And by the fall of that year, when over 30 people had gone missing all the same way from these train stations all around Naha, the police still had absolutely nothing to go on.
All they had is, here are these people. Here's where they were.
They vanished. They got nothing else. No bodies, no evidence, nothing.
But all that would change on October 22nd, 1991, roughly a year after Sue met Gia at the train station in Naha and then drank that drugged tea.
On that October day in 1991, so again, a year after the disappearance of Sue, police at this train station 1,700 miles away from the city of Naha were doing random stops of commuters on the train platform.
This had nothing to do with the ongoing investigation into all these missing people.
This was just like public safety stuff where the police were kind of just walking around looking for people who look suspicious and then checking in on them to make sure they weren't doing anything illegal.
And on this particular day at this train station far away from Naha, one of these officers spotted this very handsome guy in a beautiful brown wool coat and very fancy pants and shoes.
And he stood out a lot because of frankly how beautiful he was.
And so the police officer saw him and this very handsome guy looked up and he saw the police officer and it was like immediately he did something very suspicious.
He reached down, grabbed a bag and quickly turned around and began walking away.
And at the same time, two other people who were right near this very handsome guy did the same thing.
They grabbed bags off the ground, quickly turned around, fell in line with this handsome guy and began quickly walking away from the police.
And so the police obviously are totally suspicious.
They run across the platform and they managed to stop all three of them and they turn them around and they say, show me your bags, open them up.
And the police, they would open up these bags and they contained drugs.
And so right away, these three know they are caught, but they don't say anything.
They just stand there and they're totally silent as the police are asking them like, what are these drugs?
Where are you going with these? What's going on here?
They're not talking. And so finally the police go, give me your IDs right now.
And so all three of them cough up their IDs and the very handsome guy with the beautiful brown wool coat and fancy clothes, well, that was Jia Wang.
Same Jia Wang who had gone with Sue into his house and given her the drugged tea.
But again, these police officers are only concerned about the drugs.
They don't know anything about these guys.
They don't know that Gia met Sue and did this thing at his house with the tea.
That wasn't even reported to police. Nobody knew about it.
But these police knew they had caught these three people with these bags of illegal drugs.
So they brought them back to the station and began to question each of them.
And when they spoke to Gia, Gia said nothing.
However, when they spoke to the two other people that were with Jia, one of them began to crack.
It was obvious they had more to tell about these drugs, and they were kind of holding back tears, like they were very upset.
And one of the interrogators, sensing one of these people was prepared to confess to something, instead of really drilling down on them, he was very comforting.
And he offered them a blanket and said, here, you know, take this blanket, relax, it's okay.
You can tell me what's on your mind, it's okay.
That just totally broke this person. They said, these drugs are nothing.
You need to see what's in Gia's house. That will put these drugs to the side.
They won't matter. What's in his house is horrible.
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A redacted medical mystery uncovers how routine surgery leads to classified government operations.
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The next day, a phone rang in the police station in Naha and Officer Zhang picked it up.
And it was one of the officers who interviewed these three people with drugs and got this whole horrible confession about what was inside of this guy Jia's house.
And he told Zhang all about it. And as Zhang is listening to this, his eyes went wide because he knew this had to be connected to all these people going missing.
Like this has to be it. And so as soon as he hung up the phone, Officer Zhang rounded up 20 other police officers and 10 forensic doctors to go search Gia's house.
And when they got there, the house from the outside looked just as beautiful as when Sue had seen it for the first time and felt like her reservations about Gia had gone down because of how wonderful his house looked.
But as soon as all those police officers and the forensic doctors stepped inside of Gia's house, he wasn't home, there was nobody there.
When they went inside, they were instantly hit with this horrible, horrible smell inside the house.
Even though things are neat and beautiful inside, too, there was something bad inside this house.
And the smell seemed to be coming from the basement.
And so at some point, Officer Zhang and the other officers, they got to the door, they opened it up, and they looked down, and all they could see was just this dark room down there.
And the smell was so strong. But they pulled their shirts up over their faces, and they went down the stairs.
And when they got down there, they couldn't see anything.
It's totally dark. But the smell at this point was so overpowering that a couple of the officers almost fainted.
And so literally, they had to leave the house fearing they were breathing in toxic chemicals or something.
And they had to wear gas masks just to go back into the house and back down into the basement.
And when they got back down there, now wearing their masks, at first, it didn't seem like there was anything down there that could produce such an awful smell.
Like there was just nothing down there. But eventually, one of the officers moved to the middle of the basement, right in the middle, and they realized there was an opening.
And they looked down into it, and they couldn't believe what they saw.
And at the same time, somebody upstairs made an equally horrifying discovery because they discovered a videotape, a VHS cassette, that contained this horrible footage that effectively explained what was going on inside of that pit in the basement.
But to understand that, we need to go back a year to when Sue met Gia at the train station.
She went back to his house and drank the drug tea and blacked out.
After Sue drank that tea, she didn't die.
Gia did not kill her. Instead, she woke up a few hours later being totally confused and she was immediately hit by this horrible smell, but it was totally pitch black.
She can't see anything. And she began feeling her hands around her and she felt stone everywhere she touched.
And eventually she realized she was in what felt like the bottom of a well.
But it wasn't water she was standing in.
She was standing in something that almost felt like jelly.
And she began kind of touching it to figure out what it was.
She could not tell, but she couldn't help but feel like the things around her were kind of moving, like they were alive.
And suddenly a lid that clearly sat atop of this pit began to slide over above her.
And so suddenly light was coming down into this pit.
And at first, Sue looked up and she didn't see anything.
But then she looked down and realized what was all around her.
It was people. dead people and potentially even half alive people that were just stuffed into this big pit that were all kind of decaying or you know slowly dying or whatever it was and she's just standing amongst it all and then she looks up and she sees it's gia the beautiful man who had brought her here he's standing up there looking down at her with a smile on his face and sue immediately pleads with him to please spare me don't kill me and gia he looks down at her kind of inquisitively And he says, if I lift you out of there, will you do anything I tell you to do?
And Sue said, yes, I'll do anything. Just get me out of here, please.
And so Gia, he reached down, he grabbed Sue, and he pulled her up and out of this pit inside of his basement.
A few days later, Sue was back at the train station where she had met Gia for the first time.
But this time she was alone. And she walked up onto that train platform with no intention of riding a train.
Instead, as soon as she got up there, she began looking around, and then she spotted a businessman who was sitting on a bench.
And she walked over to him and she sat down next to him.
And we don't know exactly what she said, but we think what she said was something maybe sexually suggestive or, you know, something along those lines.
And she's holding his shoulders and touching his hand.
She doesn't know this man. And this man is very caught off guard by this, but he's kind of going along with it.
And before long, she takes this businessman's hand, stand up and they walk out of the train station down to the street and they make their way a couple blocks over to Gia's house.
And when they get there, Sue leads into the front door.
She opens it up. She brings the man inside.
The door shuts. They take their shoes off.
And Sue leads this man into the kitchen where Gia is waiting with a wire between each hand.
And as soon as this businessman walked into the kitchen, Gia pounced on him, wrapped the wire around his neck and held it until the man passed out.
And then he released the wire. And then Gia and Sue took this man, they lifted him up, and they carried him down into the basement and laid him out on the floor.
So he's not in the pit. He's just out in the middle of the basement floor.
Then Gia stepped away, picked up a video camera, turned it on, and began to film.
He was filming the man on the ground and also Sue.
And Sue, she knew what to do. She was going to do anything she was told to do.
So she climbed on top of this still very much alive businessman who's just been knocked unconscious and she straddles him.
So she's looking down at his head and she picks up a knife and she holds it in front of her.
And then she looks up at Gia, who at this point has zoomed the camera in.
She can hear the sound, the mechanics inside of the camera as it's zooming in on what she's about to do.
And then she raises the knife over her head and drives it into this man's chest.
The video that Gia shot of Sue murdering this man was the video police found on the first floor of the house shortly after police had found this horrible pit in Gia's basement.
It would turn out that Jia Wang was absolutely the serial killer who was responsible for all these people going missing from the train stations.
He would abduct them, just like he did Su, and he would bring them to his house, and then he would do horrible, horrible things to them, and eventually he would chuck their bodies into this pit.
And so when he abducted Su, he actually thought that when he drugged her, that he had killed her, and he had chucked her into the pit, believing she was dead.
But when Sue had woken up inside of that pit, when he opened it up and looked down and there she was fully alive, he had an idea.
Well, why don't I turn Sue into a murderer like me?
She can help me. And so that was the condition for her being pulled out of this pit, that she would assist him in murdering people.
And she agreed to do it. And so the reason the profile of victims changed from sex-working women to random men is because those are the people that Sue went after.
She began targeting men. And so when that elderly couple came in and reported to Officer Zhang that a man was missing, that was Sue's first victim, the man who had been seen on video being stabbed in the chest by Sue.
Now, nobody to this day understands why Sue actually went along with this.
Like, she was pulled up out of the pit, but then when she was told to go to the train station and find your first victim, it's unclear why she didn't just go to the police and say, hey, there's a serial killer, Gia, here's his house, here's where he is, go get him.
For some reason, she just did what he said.
And in fact, Sue was not the only person who was brought in to this murdering scheme.
He managed to convince three other people, including his ex-wife, to also commit murders for him.
And all three of those people also had ample opportunity to flee and tell police, but they didn't.
All of these people just did what Gia wanted without asking any questions.
It was like he had absolute control over these people.
That is, until that day in October of 1991, when those police officers doing a public safety check spotted Jia along with two accomplices fleeing with drugs.
They stopped them and they got them back to the station.
And one of his accomplices finally broke and told the truth.
And the person who told the truth, the accomplice who broke, was Sue.
She was there with him at the train station.
Nobody knew she was missing. And she was the one who, when offered a blanket and was told, you know, tell us the truth, she came clean.
Ultimately, it was this police officer's kindness that broke her.
In Jia's basement, inside of that horrible pit, right in the middle of it, were 42 bodies, 24 women and 18 men.
In the end, Jia and all four of his forced accomplices, including Su, were sentenced to death, and they were executed on January 24th, 1992.
Today, the city of Naha is still just as infamous as it was in the 90s when these murders took place.
And in fact, the nickname for Naha is now just Bandit City to reflect what happened there.
A quick note about our stories, they are all based on true events, but we sometimes use pseudonyms to protect the people involved and some details are fictionalized for dramatic purposes.
Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin Podcast.
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So that's going to do it. I really appreciate your support.
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Hey listeners, Mr. Ballin here. What if I told you that some of the strangest, darkest, and most mysterious stories happening right now are all connected to what might be the biggest crime of our generation?
You know I'm always on the hunt for the most chilling and perplexing tales out there.
Well, I've discovered a new podcast that uncovers real-world mysteries unfolding right now. much like how another Ballin' Studios podcast, Redacted Declassified Mysteries, brings hidden government secrets to light.
And it's called Lawless Planet. Host Zach Goldbaum reveals how shocking tales of murder, cover-ups, and mysterious deaths are all part of something bigger. the systematic destruction of our planet.
From activists who vanish in the Amazon to whistleblowers uncovering billion-dollar environmental crimes, these aren't just stories about the environment.
They're real-life thrillers about people caught between powerful forces willing to kill to keep their secrets buried.
Follow Lawless Planet on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.
You can listen to new episodes of Lawless Planet early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery+.
